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6 Page 4, News, Tuesday, March 26, 1991 Editorial The Terrace Bay - Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT 2WO Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. $18 per year / seniors $12 Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association and the (local); $29 per year (out of Canadian Community Newspaper Association Tel.: 825-3747 Single copies 50 cents incl. Publisher i lob bon ade eee Sandy Harbinson GST. Subscription rates: Advertising Mgr Sécvstxecesenne Linda Harbinson BCROl i.4.....c:. cai as See Robert Cotton 40 mile radivs) $39 in U.S Sales Representative............. Lisa LeClair mile us v0. : . ' Adc evenmeks Admin. Asst ee ete Gayle Fournier Production Asst................ Cheryl Kostecki Stop for the school bus Save children's lives The children of our communities travel between their homes and their schools in a large yellow vehicle with big red lights mounted front and back. This a school bus and the very sight of - it on the road should cause drivers to immediately think CAUTION. When the large, yellow bus carrying our children stops, four red lights, high on the body and very visible, begin to flash and a large STOP sign swings out from the bus chassis. The idea is that all traffic, following traffic and oncoming traffic, is supposed to stop. The children can then get off the bus and safely get to the side of the road - either side of the road. A school bus is not adorned with all of this colour and paraphernalia for looks. It is there to make drivers aware of the bus's presence. Yellow is a highly visible colour and it is used universally to indicate that caution is required. Red means danger, red means stop. It seems that some drivers still find it difficult to notice school buses and fail to stop. Perhaps they are not aware that Ontario law requires that all traffic must stop when the red lights of a school bus are flashing. Good drivers will slow down and proceed with caution as soon as they see the yellow bus ahead of them. Drivers who know the law but still have trouble remembering to stop for school buses should think about in this way. It is really not a matter of obeying a law, it's a matter of saving lives - children's lives. Don't try to remember the law, or the stiff fine. Remember YELLOW means CHILDREN AT RISK and that means ADVANCE WITH CAUTION. Once alerted to the presence of children you can't help but notice the red flashing lights and you will stop. It is a simple association. YELLOW means CHILDREN AT RISK and that means ADVANCE WITH CAUTION. Please be an alert driver. Lives depend on it. "SPEAKING OF PIV-UP BOYS, J COULD SURE USE A LITTLE SUNSHINE, MIR.RAE !" lp The war on smokers If my father was alive, the second or third thing I'd say to him is "Guess what, Pop -- cigarettes are selling for more than five dollars a pack." And he'd look at me and tap his ash and snort "Still the comedian, eh?" He'd never believe it, but it's true. Michael Wilson's latest fiscal: thumbscrew has boosted the cost of 25 coffin nails well over the five-dollar mark. In most provinces, nicotine addicts are now (pardon the pun) coughing up $40.93 for a carton of smokes -- from which our governments, federal and provincial, cream off a-tidy $31.53. Like any other drug pusher, they won't interfere with our right to kill ourselves, as long as they get their cut. My old man would never believe it. Back when he was smoking he only had to shell out 32 cents for a pack of Sportsmans. Some Christmases I'd splurge and buy him a 'flat fifty' -- a nifty tin box of gaspers that cost me half my weekly allowance -- all of half a buck. Of course there are a lot of things about smoking in the '90's that my Dad would find incredible. I can just see him looking up at an Air Canada stewardess and = saying ""Whaddya mean I can't smoke? This is an airplane isn't it? Well, where's the smoking section? Whaddya mean there's no smoking section?" Back in his day, folks smoked wherever they felt like it -- restaurants, buses, other peoples _ living rooms, barber shops... I was in the barber's chair the other day when a customer in the waiting room lit up a cigarette. The barber left off trimming my éar hairs, "went over and murmured apologetically to the guy. The guy stubbed it out. I said "What's the matter, Tony? You don't like smoke?" "No" said Tony, "I don't like fines. Police dropped by the other day Arthur Black and told me I could be fined $5,000 if I let people smoke in here." It turns out that Tony has two options: he can pay twenty or thirty grand to add a smoking room with separate ventilation to the outside, or he can become an unpaid member of the volunteer Tobacco Police and make sure nobody -- including Tony himself -- smokes on his premises. The Stamp Out Smoking movement is not just a Canadian phenomenon. Thanks to a very tough and militantly anti-nicotine Surgeon-General, most American states have similar restrictions. A 220 pound pal of mine with a penchant for smoking big smelly cigars was recently accosted in 90-pound suburban housewife who screeched that he was "polluting her air space." He says he might have been a lot more sympathetic if they _hadn't been standing at a traffic light in Times Square surrounded by belching buses and wheezing taxis. The Defense de Fumer signs are going up overseas as well. You know the old stereotype of the Parisian boulvardier, sitting at a cafe with a glass of wine in his hand and a smouldering Gauloise hanging off his lip? Well, you can scratch the Gauloise. Earlier this year the French parliament passed a law prohibiting smoking in all public places, including schools and public transport, except. for designated areas. It also banned all tobacco advertising in the country. Smokers aren't happy about the frontal assault on their cherished addiction, but their protests don't amount to much more than a few feeble emphysematic gasps. After all, you'd have to have the I.Q. of a cigarette holder to argue that smoking is a good thing. Lung cancer, liver cancer, heart disease, fetal damage...the facts are in, folks. If somebody invented smoking tomorrow, we'd throw him in jail with Manual Noriega and all the other . drug dealers. That's why smokers don't say much. But boy, if my old man was around he'd have plenty to say. He smoked two packs a day for as long as I can remember. Right up until the heart attack. the middle of New York citybya